Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911.
Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”. According to researchers, such notions still inform policy-making today. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The Conservative Government has been accused of following a “historically obsolete” welfare strategy by a team of Cambridge University researchers.

In an article published tomorrow (Friday, December 2), the group slams David Cameron and George Osborne’s austerity policies, arguing investment in welfare has always been crucial for Britain’s economic success.

The team, all members of a research group based at St John’s College, also criticise current PM Theresa May and her chancellor Philip Hammond for their apparent continuation of these policies.

Cripps Building, at St John's College

Referring to the statement made by the former PM that “you can only have a strong NHS if you have a strong economy”, the authors argue: “The narrow view that spending on the National Health Service and social care is largely a burden on the economy is blind to the large national return to prosperity that comes from all citizens benefiting from a true sense of social security.”

They continue: “There are signs that Theresa May subscribes to the same historically obsolete view.

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“Despite her inaugural statement as Prime Minister, her Chancellor’s autumn statement signals continuing austerity with further cuts inflicted on the poor and their children, the vulnerable, and infirm older people.”

Chancellor Philip Hammond gave his first Autumn Statement last Wednesday

Drawing on recent historical research, they trace the origins of the British welfare state to reforms to the Poor Laws introduced under Elizabeth I in 1598 and 1601, and claim investment in supporting the most vulnerable has always gone hand in hand with economic growth.

The researchers trace the origins of Britain's welfare state to the reign of Elizabeth I

These reforms enshrined in law an absolute “right of relief” for every subject of the Crown, funding the policy with a community tax and applying both through the local parish.

The article says the Elizabethan reforms not only introduced the world’s first social security system, but also made the elderly less reliant on their children for support, increased labour mobility, enabled urban growth and eased Britain’s transition to an industrial economy.

Simon Szreter, professor of history and public policy at Cambridge and a co-author of the article, said: “We are arguing from history that there needs to be an end to this idea of setting economic growth in opposition to the goal of welfare provision.

“A healthy society needs both, and the suggestion of history is that they seem to feed each other.”

A short educational film, commissioned by Simon Szreter and outlining some of the historical research underpinning the argument in the new paper

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The Poor Law system also maintained a level of demand by supporting the purchasing power of the poor when food prices rose.

“Overall, it facilitated the most sustained period of rising economic prosperity in the nation’s history,” it says.

They also point to Victorian bids to reverse the Poor Laws, which led to the introduction of the notorious workhouse system, where only the truly destitute sought help.

Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”. According to researchers, such notions still inform policy-making today. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 overhauled the earlier Elizabethan Laws in an effort to prevent abuses of the system that were felt to be draining the pockets of honest taxpayers.

The study suggests there is no evidence this approach, which came close to criminalising the poor, actually brought about much economic benefit.

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In fact, British growth rates gradually fell behind the country’s rivals’ after 1870 - and only recovered after 1950, in the postwar decades of the revived, universalist welfare state.

The authors say to cut welfare budgets because this will relieve taxation on “hard-working families” implies those who need welfare are somehow unproductive, and just as the Victorian measures attempted to address a perceived problem with the “idle poor”, current strategies often dub benefits claimants, directly or indirectly, as “scroungers”.

“The interests of the poor and the wealthy are not mutually opposed in a zero-sum game,” they conclude.

“Investment in policies that develop human and social capital will underpin economic opportunities and security for the whole population.”

The paper, Health and welfare as a burden on the state? The dangers of forgetting history is published in The Lancet .